The Twitter bird is not buzzing all that much when it comes to Tamil Nadu politics.
Unlike the BJP at the national level, which seems to have a very effective social media strategy, and to lesser degree the Congress and the Aam Admi Party, regional parties in Tamil Nadu seem to prefer the traditional forms of campaigning, including street rallies and pamphleteering, and focus lesser on online social media.
Among the leaders, DMK’s treasurer M.K. Stalin seems to have made a commendable debut online with his Twitter account @mkstalin having put out regular tweets since he joined the micro blogging network on March 1. His account currently has over 12,000 followers. The DMK patriach M.Karunanidhi’s account @kalaignar89, which has been active for longer, has over 22,000 followers and puts tweets in Tamil. However, both the accounts don’t really interact with audiences and sticks to alerts in the form of campaign speeches and photos. There are other party leaders though - J. Anbazhagan, T.K.S. Elangovan and Kushbu Sundar – who interact with those who ping them on the social networks.
The AIADMK, on the other hand, is largely absent on the social media space with no leader tweeting regularly. The official account - @AIADMKOfficial – has fewer than 1,000 followers. Traction with the online audience also seems poor.
The Aam Aadmi Party’s State branch does not seem to have a focussed campaign on Twitter unlike in a few other States. However, it does have a strong presence on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/AAPTamilNadu. It has close to 80,000 ‘likes’ and its volunteers have been putting out viral content targeting both the AIADMK and the DMK.
The party that is getting lampooned the most online is the DMDK. There have been many viral videos poking fun of the party’s campaigns.
Not surprisingly, election campaigns or keywords related to regional parties are seldom ‘trending’ on the social networks. On Tuesday, the last day of campaigning, the local audience was more engaged with the news of a popular Tamil film actor joining Twitter than with any election-related news.
